After presenting some expository background information, (Chapter 1), it is with this earlier generation that the narrative begins. I960 was selected as a starting point, not only because this was the time of my first encounter with jazz as a teenager, but because it was around that time that British jazz emerged from the cocoon of respectful emulation with which it had wrapped itself out of a mistaken attitude of self-imposed second-bestness to the ‘genuine article’, which had to be American and, preferably, black. As it unfolds, the story will also reveal fascinating though little-discussed links with the early development of British rock music, and show how the new British jazz contributed to the shaping of the latter